Friday, 23 June 2006

A GREAT deal of heat was produced 10 days ago in the Holyrood chamber by a short debate on the Student Fees (Specification) (Scotland) Order.

Why so? By a slim majority the Lib Dem and Labour parties whipped through a variable tuition fee charge of £2700 for medical students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is £1000 more than the variable fee to be paid by other students from these areas coming to Scottish universities. The rowdy barracking from government benches tells us an election is in the offing.

The Scottish government previously vetoed top-up fees but has now introduced anomalies based on where you come from. Paradoxically, students from the Irish Republic or any other EU state don't pay, while English, Welsh and Northern Irish students will have to pay more to study in Scotland.

As the independent MSP Dennis Canavan pointed out, such discrimination is illegal between EU states, but a loophole is being used to restrict non-Scottish UK applicants.

The Deputy First Minister, Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen, built his educational Hadrian's Wall but the bricks are made without straw. An influx of English candidates fleeing the fees hike to Scottish courses was assured, he told us. In 2005, "before the costs were announced, the number of applicants for medical places from England increased by 17.8 per cent…

"That is the reason for this move… It is a practical, sensible policy from an Executive that has abolished tuition fees, opposes top-up fees, opposes variable fees and is absolutely determined to protect university places for Scottish students."

But is this the real issue? Of course Scotland needs more doctors, we need more of those trained here to stay and work here, but is it not sensible to open up courses to greater numbers and especially to those from working-class backgrounds, no matter where they come from?

The SNP was vilified by the First Minister for keeping courses open and opposing these "top-up" fees as "the most anti-Scottish thing that it has ever done".

Surely the imposition of a graduate tax on students was far more damaging. Isn't the Scottish way to open education to as many as possible, as I and Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen and Jamie Stone all experienced?

Yet in Jamie's speech he set aside his manufactured rage at the First Minister, as reported in the Groat a few weeks ago, and grabbed hold of the little Scotland line. "We must ensure that students choose to study in Scotland because it is the best place for their education, not because it is the best place for their pocket," was his rallying cry. "I have said before, and I will say again, that I will not tolerate students from my constituency or any other part of Scotland losing out. It is our job to stand up for our students."

In the old Scots tradition of free education there would not have been the need to "stand up for our students". They would have had rights, and can do again. SNP researchers have proved that student grants are cheaper than student loans and that is admitted now by others. So the mix of students shouldn't need quotas.

The humbug of protecting students from the Far North "losing out" should be exposed for what it is - a guilty cover-up by a Lib Dem to hide the introduction of the graduate tax.

We are a rich country - why not invest in education and be honest about the real costs? Then we can have a proper debate about controlling the revenue and taxes which are reserved to London at present and are denied under devolution.

Jamie and his friends are remarkably silent when it comes to the hundreds of graduates already "losing out" who have had to make a start paying the Lib Dem/ Labour graduate tax. The coming election could indeed be made to change all that.

NEWS that "rich" NHS areas will have to subsidise "poor" regions is the latest wheeze of the Scottish Health Minister, Andy Kerr. That begs another monetary question: how do you measure riches and poverty?

I've been campaigning about care of the elderly, better public transport, support for rural services like the post offices and, yes, health services in smaller communities, such as the resuscitated Wick maternity unit. All these and many more rely for funds on the way we measure need.

Academics agree that urban needs and rural needs require different measurements. Alas this government sees its Labour heartlands as those in most need.

That's because they refuse to adopt a rural deprivation index, the fair way to determine remoter areas' needs too.

Comparisons with our Scandinavian neighbours are the subject of studies in the EU Northern Peripheries Programmes to which I have contributed my tuppenceworth this week. In an interview with Dr Jane Farmer, of the Highlands and Islands Health Research Institute, I argued that you can add up affordable housing, support for older people or small schools, the unchanging nature of our scattered geography… all have to be coped with.

If you leave it to the current measures we are too often short-changed. As a national-minded Scot I can't see why any part of the country should be forced to accept disadvantage through lack of honest measurement of our needs.

That's ufinished business that an SNP-led government must tackle.

BRIEFINGS on all the crises of the day rain in thick and fast. The middle of June seems a particularly fertile time for non-governmental organisation staff to bombard harassed MSPs.

So it was with a little relief that I looked over the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds document on avian Flu. Happily it was sent to me by their advocacy coordinator Juliet Swann…

A GREAT deal of heat was produced 10 days ago in the Holyrood chamber by a short debate on the Student Fees (Specification) (Scotland) Order.

Why so? By a slim majority the Lib Dem and Labour parties whipped through a variable tuition fee charge of £2700 for medical students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is £1000 more than the variable fee to be paid by other students from these areas coming to Scottish universities. The rowdy barracking from government benches tells us an election is in the offing.

The Scottish government previously vetoed top-up fees but has now introduced anomalies based on where you come from. Paradoxically, students from the Irish Republic or any other EU state don't pay, while English, Welsh and Northern Irish students will have to pay more to study in Scotland.

As the independent MSP Dennis Canavan pointed out, such discrimination is illegal between EU states, but a loophole is being used to restrict non-Scottish UK applicants.

The Deputy First Minister, Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen, built his educational Hadrian's Wall but the bricks are made without straw. An influx of English candidates fleeing the fees hike to Scottish courses was assured, he told us. In 2005, "before the costs were announced, the number of applicants for medical places from England increased by 17.8 per cent…

"That is the reason for this move… It is a practical, sensible policy from an Executive that has abolished tuition fees, opposes top-up fees, opposes variable fees and is absolutely determined to protect university places for Scottish students."

But is this the real issue? Of course Scotland needs more doctors, we need more of those trained here to stay and work here, but is it not sensible to open up courses to greater numbers and especially to those from working-class backgrounds, no matter where they come from?

The SNP was vilified by the First Minister for keeping courses open and opposing these "top-up" fees as "the most anti-Scottish thing that it has ever done".

Surely the imposition of a graduate tax on students was far more damaging. Isn't the Scottish way to open education to as many as possible, as I and Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen and Jamie Stone all experienced?

Yet in Jamie's speech he set aside his manufactured rage at the First Minister, as reported in the Groat a few weeks ago, and grabbed hold of the little Scotland line. "We must ensure that students choose to study in Scotland because it is the best place for their education, not because it is the best place for their pocket," was his rallying cry. "I have said before, and I will say again, that I will not tolerate students from my constituency or any other part of Scotland losing out. It is our job to stand up for our students."

In the old Scots tradition of free education there would not have been the need to "stand up for our students". They would have had rights, and can do again. SNP researchers have proved that student grants are cheaper than student loans and that is admitted now by others. So the mix of students shouldn't need quotas.

The humbug of protecting students from the Far North "losing out" should be exposed for what it is - a guilty cover-up by a Lib Dem to hide the introduction of the graduate tax.

We are a rich country - why not invest in education and be honest about the real costs? Then we can have a proper debate about controlling the revenue and taxes which are reserved to London at present and are denied under devolution.

Jamie and his friends are remarkably silent when it comes to the hundreds of graduates already "losing out" who have had to make a start paying the Lib Dem/ Labour graduate tax. The coming election could indeed be made to change all that.

NEWS that "rich" NHS areas will have to subsidise "poor" regions is the latest wheeze of the Scottish Health Minister, Andy Kerr. That begs another monetary question: how do you measure riches and poverty?

I've been campaigning about care of the elderly, better public transport, support for rural services like the post offices and, yes, health services in smaller communities, such as the resuscitated Wick maternity unit. All these and many more rely for funds on the way we measure need.

Academics agree that urban needs and rural needs require different measurements. Alas this government sees its Labour heartlands as those in most need.

That's because they refuse to adopt a rural deprivation index, the fair way to determine remoter areas' needs too.

Comparisons with our Scandinavian neighbours are the subject of studies in the EU Northern Peripheries Programmes to which I have contributed my tuppenceworth this week. In an interview with Dr Jane Farmer, of the Highlands and Islands Health Research Institute, I argued that you can add up affordable housing, support for older people or small schools, the unchanging nature of our scattered geography… all have to be coped with.

If you leave it to the current measures we are too often short-changed. As a national-minded Scot I can't see why any part of the country should be forced to accept disadvantage through lack of honest measurement of our needs.

That's ufinished business that an SNP-led government must tackle.

BRIEFINGS on all the crises of the day rain in thick and fast. The middle of June seems a particularly fertile time for non-governmental organisation staff to bombard harassed MSPs.

So it was with a little relief that I looked over the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds document on avian Flu. Happily it was sent to me by their advocacy coordinator Juliet Swann…

Friday, 9 June 2006

ON my travels I sense a growing mood of confidence about our diverse culture and languages in the Highlands and Islands. That's a sure sign of a wider optimism for our economic and social prospects.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise has recently acknowledged the key part played by our traditional arts and music as well as contemporary artistic expression in underpinning lively communities. This has been confirmed by widespread research over several years. Would that Scottish Enterprise had a similar remit for the rest of Scotland.

Happenstance last week led me to meet a most enthusiastic local proponent of that confident cultural diversity. She is Dr Donna Heddle, of Orkney College, who mentors the UHI's BA honours degree in Cultural Studies of the Highlands and Islands and their MA in Highlands and Islands Literature. These are naturally open to distance-learning opportunities but based in Orkney. Donna, a Caithness native from Castletown, has drawn together an exciting prospectus of all the strands of identity that make up our complex region around the Pentland Firth and the North Atlantic rim.

The courses are attracting students from abroad; several are signed up from the USA and Canada. Revenue from their fees boosts the chances of more local candidates being able to develop their knowledge of our Scots, Gaelic and Norse cultures that coalesce - or, as some would have it, collide - in the Caithness, Sutherland and Orkney triangle. I was pleased to see that Dr Heddle has engaged Carl MacDougall, host of the excellent four-part series Scots: The Language of the People screened recently on BBC TV.

Talking of confidence-building, we need a big push for the Thurso-based nuclear decommissioning studies just in case people believe newspaper stories that the University of Central Lancashire beat us to it.

The cross-party group for Scots language decided last week that Dr Heddle should make us a presentation in the autumn. She's a Caithnessian who has learned Gaelic along with her robust native speech in the Castletown version of the Caithness dialect. There's a lot we can learn from Donna so Caithness schools can enjoy the legacy of Caithness Scots and Gaelic that provides a new sense of well-being for the Far North. In contrast I am aware of certain councillors who object to Gaelic language appearing on bilingual road signs here and even voting in the Highland Council to stop people in other distant parts of the Highlands from opening a Gaelic-medium school.

With a local culture which has huge dollops of English regional accents, through the all-UK recruitment to Dounreay, diversity could stand a bit of celebration by including local strands of culture too. Frankly it would be racist if anyone proposed that all English people should conform by dropping their local tongue when they reside in the county. Who knows, some locals might soon be telling all Polish arrivals that they have to speak English, or else.

Hopefully not if a confident and informed mood is adopted by those in positions of power towards our own native tongues and the new tongues on the block.

CAITHNESS is indeed a unique place but it has yet to fix that idea in the wider public mind - that despite having more prehistoric sites in the county than Orkney, boasting the last clan battle in Scotland fought at Altimarlach, and, of course, sporting some of the best surf in Europe.

Last week I visited an important part of that unique Caithness fabric, Pulteney Distillery. Set up in 1826, it managed to continue to produce its water of life throughout the prohibition years and now has gone global. It is one of the biggest and most successful concerns in Caithness.

The only problem is that its single malt whisky is proving so popular that demand is threatening to outstrip current stocks - but then that is a problem worth having!

Prompted by a more than passing interest in its amber product, I wanted to explore the prospects for the local heating system fuelled by previously waste steam and hot water that should provide green credentials for the distillery and constant hot-water supplies for local homes. The Environment and Rural Development Committee's review of statutory instruments that regulate private water supplies and license abstraction from rivers and burns affects distilleries in particular.

So is Pulteney facing the challenges of tight regulation? Top marks are deserved.

Thanks to manager Fred Sinclair, whose enthusiasm and knowledge highlights yet another branch of Scottish cultural diversity, the worldwide success story of selling one of Scotland's treasured malt whiskies is in safe hands.

Fred originally comes from Sanday in Orkney and started work in the Scapa distillery near Kirkwall, after which he has served at Inver House outlets in Speyside and Wick.

With modern marketing and developing palates, sales of malt whiskies generally have soared and the huge Chinese market is only just opening up. So the prospects for well-marketed products like Old Pulteney depend on being able to make enough to meet market demands.

With a big surge in Scottish confidence we could raise a glass after the Holyrood elections next May and start to recycle the whisky revenues from Scottish stills for more tangible local needs. Add this to Scottish oil, an asset worth £170,000 for every man, woman and child in Scotland. This week the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, launched proposals in the House of Commons to repatriate oil and gas, and the revenues from the Scottish sector of the North Sea, to the Scottish Parliament. Now that would be worth much more than a second dram.

I was elected Highlands & Islands MSP in 2003. I am a member of the Parliament's Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee as well as the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. I am also a historian, musician, author and traditional music festival organiser.
Scots, Gaelic and the Traditional Arts are core interests as are nuclear disarmament, affordable housing and saving consultant led services in the NHS.
I was born and educated in Glasgow, and attended Dundee University and Education College. As a former Modern Studies teacher much of my professional life was spent teaching at the Invergordon and Alness Academies as the Principal Teacher of Guidance. Since early retirement, or early ‘relifement’ as I like to call it, I have developed my historical training and skills by writing the book Plaids and Bandanas.
I have been a long time SNP activist and was a former District Councillor in Ross and Cromarty. I joined the SNP in 1966, was FSN President from 1970-1973 and have been a member of the SNP's National Council, Executive, and Cabinet.